With the resurgence of direct military conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 2015 and in the wake of the 2016 coup attempt, Turkey began to reinstall and reinvigorate the invasive security apparatus it constructed during the 1980s. This report uses satellite imagery to track the development of 73 checkpoints across southeast Turkey, showing…
Since the onset of its direct intervention in Syria, Turkey has struggled to create stability in northern Aleppo. Writing in mid-2017, Aaron Stein and others attributed this to the Turkish development and support of two conflicting security apparatuses; the newly created local police forces and existent militant opposition, as well as local council governance structures…
As the Syrian Civil War enters its eighth year, previously overlooked ethnic and religious groups, and the divisions and alliances between them have garnered more coverage and analysis. After years of war and the break up of traditional loyalties, groups that were previously suppressed by the Syrian government have been able to reach out to…
Since the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and allied Syrian Arab and Turkmen militias concluded “Operation Olive Branch” in Syria in late March of 2018, allegations of human rights abuses have widely circulated on social media. Among these charges is the destruction of graveyards and accompanying shrines throughout Afrin. Videos and photographs have surfaced depicting Yezidi…
On October 8, a photograph spread throughout WhatsApp showing Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist living in Turkey, entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul through a rear entrance. He has not been seen since, with credible reports that he was either murdered or kidnapped by Saudi officials. Later, a video that this photograph was taken from…
On March 16, 2018, at around 21:00 local time (UTC+2), an alleged Turkish airstrike hit the main hospital of the Kurdish-majority city of Afrin, in northwestern Syria, where Turkey and allied Free Syrian Army (FSA) groups are engaging in an offensive against the People’s Protection Units (Kurdish: Yekîneyên Parastina Gel, YPG). The YPG and the…
On June 28, 2017, two Turkish media outlets published footage of a location within Syrian territory where the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK, from Turkish Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri) “allegedly will build a base” if it “enters” the Idlib governorate. Firstly, A Haber broadcasted a short reportage with “impressions” from Idlib. A Haber is a nationwide Turkish…
A video and a report published by the Turkish state-owned Anadolu Agency (AA) presents an alternative course of events for May 16, 2017. This article analyses both the visual evidence and the written account. In the described course of events in both accounts, AA largely blames the pro-Kurdish/anti-Erdoğan protesters for the violence. However, a closer look at the presented imagery and the statements made in the video and the report reveals that some claims made by AA are wrong, others are misleading in the given context and some are not supported by facts.
On Tuesday, May 16, nearly a dozen people were injured after a clash between pro-Kurdish/anti-Erdoğan protesters and a group that included both Erdoğan supporters and Turkish security officials, including bodyguards of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The clash happened outside of the Turkish Ambassador’s residence in Washington D.C., and marks the second instance since 2016 where Turkish security officials were…
The Turkish military operation dubbed ‘Euphrates Shield’ (ES) began on August 24, 2016, aiming to clear an area of 5,000 square kilometres of Syrian territory, and is conducted jointly with Syrian rebel factions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Within four months, over 2,000 square kilometres were captured from so-called Islamic State (IS) and Kurdish…
